COLOR

So much of the image starts with color. Even if you stand 15 ft. away from your computer screen, usage of color (and lighting) is what immediately causes a major divide in the student/professional work gap. The most important thing to know is that color palette building begins on set (same is true for shading on digital sets for animated films). The character’s costume color, color of props on sets, color of the light gels, and the color of the location’s walls must be carefully considered. There’s only so far you can color-grade yourself out of on-set decisions.

HUE CONTRAST

2 COLORS

3 COLORS

 

AERIAL CONTRAST

Aerial contrast is mimicking the natural occurrence of “depth haze”: A mountain far away looks cooler in color compared to what’s closer to you. This concept can be applied to smaller spaces with the colors of the set or colors of the lights to mimic depth hazing.

 

MONOCHROMATIC BG HUE CONTRAST

Monochromatic bg contrast is making the background behind your center of interest one homogenous hue (monochromatic). This simplifies the frame and quickly helps us find the center of focus.

SATURATION CONTRAST

Saturation contrast is one of the mostly used types of color contrast in our world dominated by advertising, and it actually took me years to learn about it and just how much it’s used around us. It’s the contrast by a saturated color over a less saturated background, or vice versa. This isolates the center of interest purely with intensity of hue.

VALUE CONTRAST

Contrast separation is one of the most essential techniques for directing the eye to the subject. By having the subject brighter or darker than its background, the eye can detect its difference in value (without the viewer realizing) and the subject is more easily spotted which is especially helpful if it’s a complex or chaotic shot. To train your eye to see contrast and values, download these images and completely desaturate the image to study their black and white values.

BRIGHT OVER DARK

 

DARK OVER BRIGHT

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CHIAROSCURO SANDWICH / COUNTERCHANGE

This technique combines both bright over dark and dark over bright. It was used by Rembrandt and other masters: “scuro, chiaro, scuro, chiaro” or “dark, bright, dark, bright” sequence sandwich. For dynamic contrast, the subject’s lit side is placed over the dark side of the background, and the dark side of the subject is placed a bright part of the background.

COLOR SCRIPT

When developing your movie, it’s important that the art department and director of photography create a color script together. A color script is a series of thumbnails that inform the lighting and color of scenes across the movie to fit the mood and emotions in the script. They're key to getting multiple departments on the same page early on. They can be painted by the art department, or be blurred reference still frames you’re looking to match in lighting/color.